U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions looks on during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room of the White House June 12, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

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Features » January 5, 2018

The War on Drugs Is an Abject Failure. Jeff Sessions Just Ramped It Up.

The tide is finally turning against marijuana criminalization. But Sessions just took a giant leap backwards.

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Our criminal legal system is not equally applied; it has always targeted people of color.

The U.S. tide is clearly turning in favor of marijuana decriminalization. Twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C. have legalized medical marijuana. On January 1, California joined Alaska, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington in legalizing the sale of recreational pot. A Gallup poll completed in October found that, for the first time, a majority of Republicans (51 percent) support legalizing pot, while 64 percent of Americans overall support legalization. As Arcview Market Research noted, marijuana sales rose 33 percent from 2016 to 2017. The trend is obvious: The prohibition of pot, and the draconian laws that define the war on drugs, are wildly unpopular.

However, the shift in public opinion has not stopped Attorney General Jeff Sessions. His mission to revive and pump steroids into the war on drugs has continued unabated.

Back in May, Sessions released a memo directing federal prosecutors to once again seek the harshest sentences possible under the law. The memo rescinded Obama-era directives that were designed to lighten sentences for low-level drug crimes by stepping away from mandatory minimum sentencing. Such directives comprised a key component of the Obama administration's efforts to reverse some of the severely punitive actions of his predecessors.

In June, Jeff Sessions sent a letter to congressional leaders stating his opposition to the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment (also known as the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment), which was implemented to protect legalized medical marijuana programs.

On January 4, Sessions went yet another step further by rescinding a series of Obama-era memos that ushered in the wave of marijuana legalization by directing federal prosecutors not to intervene in states that legalized pot. While marijuana’s federal status as an illegal, controlled substance never changed, these memos essentially let the states govern themselves in this realm. Now, however, the status of medical and recreational legalization may be in peril, as the federal government is again free to raid state-approved clinics and dispensaries.

So much for states' rights.

None of these developments should be surprising, given that Sessions once said that “good people don't smoke marijuana,” and that marijuana was “only slightly less awful” than heroin. He also said the relaxing of drug laws was one of Obama's “great failures,” before praising Nancy Reagan's “Just Say No” campaign, which was an abject failure. And Sessions' troubling history on race cannot be ignored either, as it is part-and-parcel to his overall ideology. He was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 for a series of racist comments which including calling the NAACP “un-American” and calling a civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race.”

Our criminal legal system is not equally applied; it has always targeted people of color. Research by the Herald Tribune found that Black people in Florida received far longer sentences than white people with identical charges and criminal records. Department of Justice investigations found that the Chicago and Baltimore police departments routinely violated civil rights laws by unfairly targeting African Americans and Latinos. And there was the obscene 100:1 crack-to-cocaine sentencing ratio (the law until 2010; its now 18:1), which led to thousands of Black people being sent to prison for exorbitant sentences, while white people convicted of cocaine possession enjoyed far greater leniency. Crack and cocaine are the same drug, but crack was generally used by poor Black people, and cocaine was generally used by middle to upper-class whites.

As the Prison Policy Initiative reported, of the more than 2.3 million people currently incarcerated in the United States, approximately one in five is currently locked up for a drug offense. Moreover, the drug war has served to demonize people with addictions by pushing them to the fringes of society.

We are currently in the midst of a drug epidemic, with at least 66,324 people killed of drug overdoses between May 2016 and May 2017. The impact is so severe that it caused the life expectancy in the United States to drop in 2015 and 2016. A cursory examination of recent history and data clearly shows that drug addition will not be solved through fist-pounding law and order. Instead of locking people up, we need to expand medication-assisted treatment, destigmatize addiction and drug use and address the highly deceptive maneuvers of big pharma.

Expanding access to medical marijuana is a critical part of the solution. Some research has shown that marijuana is highly effective in combating chronic pain, and it is not nearly as addictive as opioids.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is aggressively sending the country in the wrong direction. If he continues along this path, our prison population will continue to rise, people with addictions will continue to be cast out from society and the opioid epidemic will grow even more deadly. The seriousness of these actions cannot be overstated: Our prison system is an international disgrace, and it's directly tied to the drug war.

Jesse Mechanic is the founding editor of The Overgrown and has contributed to Truthout, HuffPost and numerous other publications. He's appeared on C-Span's The Washington Journal, Columbia University's #Disruptive, Humanity in the Headlines and This Is Happening. Follow him on Twitter: @Jmechanic.

Yes, in several states it is legal, and they can't actually do anything about it in those states, just don't buy it and cross the border into a state where it is not as then you'll be hit with possession and potentially trafficking.

Posted by George Hess on 2018-01-10 22:41:44

In the same way, even if they decided to suddenly change their mind and make pot legal, unless a presidential or judicial order is given, it's not going to change the fact that everyone who's in jail on a drug charge will continue to serve their sentence for breaking the law. Which is the point I was making.

Posted by George Hess on 2018-01-10 22:39:12

Neither honestly, I'm just tired of seeing people say "Oh, they shouldn't go to jail because X shouldn't be illegal." I know people who smoke the stuff, and I could really care less. It's no different than the millions of cigarette smokers out there, and it's none of my business, but at the same time, if you get arrested for doing something you know you can be arrested for, you don't get to turn around and whine about it

Posted by George Hess on 2018-01-10 22:37:48

Are you joking?!?!?! We have literally been fighting this for decades and we are finally making progress and this jack-ass wants to try to back step.

May I remind you that it *IS* in fact legal in 29 states now. I don't know if you are a troll or just an idiot.

Posted by mosh2841 on 2018-01-09 12:55:56

It isn't illegal in Colorado. It isn't a narcotic either. That is absurd. Trump said it is a "states rights" thing but of course he is a liar. Jeff Sessions is in favor or forfeiture and seizure which is unconstitutional. He is also a fan of for profit prisons. Trump and Sessions will hopefully be in jail soon enough.

Posted by Jeff King on 2018-01-08 22:57:54

On the other hand, you could always try...not breaking the law...

"Marijuana shouldn't be illegal." Cool. Fight for it. Petition. See if people agree with you. Take it to court and have it changed. No, you don't want to do that. You want to do something BECAUSE it is illegal.

Do the crime, do the time. There's the legal way to approach a situation, and then there's becoming a criminal...

Posted by George Hess on 2018-01-08 19:30:03

As long as the Republican party is in control ,there`s no such thing as FREEDOM in America.

Posted by Jon Goode on 2018-01-08 16:48:36

Stupid people look at the war on drugs and fail to understand it's REAL PURPOSE!

The whole purpose of the phony war on drugs is to MAKE MONEY for all the people who pretend to fight drugs!

My god, this is as basic as it gets!

The phony drug war funds the DEA (billions wasted there!) as well as a whole slew of local and state police officials. All of these fools make an excellent living from hunting down drug users and dealers. Altogether, the police manage to make BILLIONS, if not trillions, from fighting drugs!

Tell me! If you had a gold mine, would you want it to suddenly end, and force you to get a real job and have to actually WORK for a living? Hell NO!

Pretending to fight drugs makes people RICH!

That's why drugs are always going to stay illegal. Because there's a whole lot of money to be made by hunting down users and dealers and locking them up!

Nobody gives a damn about solving drug abuse! Hell no! In fact, they want all that drug abuse to CONTINUE, so there's a good supply of people to lock up!

Drug wars make MONEY for all the idiots who fight them.

And, the people who get to spend all that money want things to stay just as they are! FOREVER!

Smarten up, for god's sake!

The drug war is a complete success, because lots and lots of police and courts and prisons get rich as fuck from it!